all antidepressants can cause withdrawal effects. I've been put on the drug for something that went

wrong in my life, you know, divorce, job loss. I'm here on it a few years later. And when I tried

to come off it, you know, things went so badly. I had trouble sleeping. I would wake up in the morning

in full blown panic, you know, palm sweating, heart racing.

And I would stay in that state for most of the day.

And at some point I thought I can't keep living like this.

Well, that is Dr Mark Horowitz.

He runs England's first deprescribing clinic for antidepressant drugs.

I'm Liz Earle. Welcome. This is the Lizal Well-Being Show, the podcast helping us all have a better second half. As you know, I am on a true

mission to find ways for all of us to thrive in our later life by investing and investigating

more into our health and our well-being today.

And mental health is every bit as important as our physical health, of course.

And we are in nothing short of a crisis when it comes to what's been described as an epidemic

in mental health decline and a surge in mental health medication prescribing.

So in the year 22 to 23, a total of 8.6 million patients in England were prescribed antidepressants.

That's nearly 9 million patients in England alone.

My gosh.

And that number is almost double what it was in 2011.

Now, SSRIs are the most widely prescribed antidepressants, the common ones you may well have heard of,

being Prozac, Citralopram and Certraline. And I have to say that before recording this episode, I kind of asked

around a few friends, any experiences, any anecdotes of antidepressants. And nine times out of

ten, I was really surprised that so many of my friends, previously unbeknownst to me, were actually

...